What Really Happens If You Don’t Get Enough Sleep?

We all know sleep is important, but the majority of us don’t get enough shut-eye. Thanks to a steady supply of caffeine, many people work through their tiredness and try to ignore the heavy feeling of their eyelids. Yet aside from constantly feeling tired and run-down, what impact does a lack of sleep have on your health?

Brace yourselves — not sleeping enough can be a serious detriment to your health. And it’s a prevalent problem. According to an infographic designed by FFunction for Zeo (a company that manufacturers an electronic “sleep coach,”) and summarized by Fast Company Design, “only 7 percent of people get eight hours of sleep a night.”

You may be one of those people who feels that eight hours is excessive; however, it continues to be the ideal amount recommended by doctors and researchers. To persuade you to cut back on the late-night working, TV watching or Internet surfing, consider what can happen to your body as a result of a chronic lack of sleep, as outlined in the infographic.

The risk of breast cancer doubles as a result of going to bed too late.

Your heart attack risk goes up 100 percent if you get less than seven hours of sleep each night.

One sleepless night can result in you performing the next day as if you’re legally drunk with a blood alcohol content limit of o.08.

Enough with the bad news! Let’s look at the bright side of things. Getting enough sleep not only helps you feel rested, energized and more productive, it can have other benefits, too:

A better ability to empathize.

A more than doubled ability to solve problems.

Longer sleep is associated with a higher IQ in children.

You can lose 14.3 pounds a year simply by sleeping one hour more each day.

Lesson learned? Sleep is not only good — it’s good for your health. So take your bedtime seriously.

Do you have trouble getting enough sleep? If you have additional tips on how to help make sleep a priority, we’d love to hear from you in the comments section!